ICTY prosecutor says Serbia failure to arrest Mladic 'inexcusable'

[JURIST] Carla Del Ponte [official profile], chief prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia [official website], on Monday called Serbia's continued failure to arrest war crimes fugitive Ratko Mladic [ICTY case backgrounder; JURIST news archive] "inexcusable," saying he should be on trial with a group of seven Bosnian Serb military and paramilitary officers charged with massacring 8,000 Muslims in Srebrenica [BBC backgrounder; JURIST news archive] in 1995. Del Ponte's comments came during opening arguments in the trial, where the seven men face charges [indictment, PDF; ICTY case backgrounder] of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. Del Ponte said that the seven were among those most responsible for the massacre, which she called the "final phase of a comprehensive criminal plan to permanently erase the Muslim population of Srebrenica," but said that Mladic should also be on trial.

About Paper Chase

Paper Chase is JURIST's real-time legal news service, powered by a team of 30 law student reporters and editors led by law professor Bernard Hibbitts at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law. As an educational service, Paper Chase is dedicated to presenting important legal news and materials rapidly, objectively and intelligibly in an accessible format.